For our latest Live Listen Closely album listening party chat podcast, we are chiming in with My Bloody Valentine fever as the band prepare to play Dublin for the first time in 33 years this week.

Their seminal and definite album Loveless is considered a classic of shoegaze, a totem of the genre. If shoegaze is about building sonic cathedrals, Loveless is the La Sagrada Família of shoegaze.

Nialler and Aoife Barry discuss the album's fraught recording process that involved 19 studios, up to 45 engineers, two and a half years and approximately £250,000 of Creation Records for 48 minutes of music.

But what music! Kevin Shields glide guitar and open tunings added an otherness to the record, as did the mono mix and the Enforced Method Acting of getting Belinda Butcher to sing after immediately waking up.

Loveless is a nebulous thing - it's more of an ambient wall-of-sound than a guitar rock record at times, that nearly bankrupted the label and turned one label exec's hair white. We discuss it all.

This is an addendum podcast to our original 2022 episode about the album.

Our next listening party event is Outkast's Stankonia on Wednesday November 26th.

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We discuss the album of the month with the most chatter around it - Lily Allen's new direct diaristic divorce album West End Girl, along with records from Irish music scene stalwart Maykay with her long awaited debut solo album, the new sixth album from Florence + The Machine, Katie & Allison Crutchfield's Snocaps record, the supernaturally-inspired Old Earth from Dublin producer Rory Sweeney and friends, the Philadelphia shoegaze band They Are Gutting A Body Of Water and the new PinkPantheress remix album.

Along with spotlights for previous guest Ailbhe Reddy and short king hater Alex Cameron.

Plus some TV, film and books we've enjoyed.

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* Support Nialler9 on Patreon, get event discounts, playlists, ad-free episodes and access our Discord community.

One of the '90s most revered albums, Grace is an astonishing debut LP from the American singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley. Sadly, it was to be his only album as he tragically died three years later but the album is considered a classic for its wide-ranging, reaching vocals (Buckley's voice spanned four octaves), its resonant melding of rock, folk, soul and jazz and songs of intensity, beauty and grandeur including of course, the definitive cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah', along with songs like 'Lover, You Should’ve Come Over', 'Mojo Pin', and 'Grace'.

Baroque, sweeping, poetic, soul–baring, biblical, elemental and melodramatic Grace is considered one of the best debut albums of all time, and generally just one of the best records of all time.

The high drama of his life imbues Buckley’s songs with a level of intensity and singular weight It’s no wonder that it’s an album that teenagers are still discovering today.

We discuss the record in front of a live Listen Closely audience.

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